


Unexpected Evidence

by Nineveh_uk



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: Aftermath, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:29:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23244040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nineveh_uk/pseuds/Nineveh_uk
Summary: What should have been a quiet day out with perhaps only a proposal of marriage to mar it turns into something quite different, when a gang of thieves resorts to an unexpected way to ensure their getaway. It wasn't bromide in the tea...
Relationships: Harriet Vane/Peter Wimsey
Comments: 12
Kudos: 87





	Unexpected Evidence

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a prompt somewhere for sex pollen aftermath and ended up writing this. Thank you, prompter, whoever you are, wherever it was. Originally posted on my DW.

Harriet came round to the sight of Peter facing in the other direction and apparently engaged in hurriedly fastening his trousers. He must have heard her stir for he turned round with a look of relief followed by a flush of scarlet from open collar to disheveled hairline. She had a feeling that the prominent bruise at his throat was not from the ground.  
  
'My dear,' he said, 'I am most dreadfully sorry. I think it must have been some sort of drug in the tea.'  
  
'Like the opposite of bromide,' said Harriet.  
  
'Rather.'  
  
The gang they had been pursuing after witnessing the robbery at the hotel had vanished - worse, had done so in Mrs Merdle, abandoned in a lay-by - leaving their own dilapidated Austin behind. It had supposed to have been a quiet afternoon out with tea at a good hotel and Harriet delivered home to Doughty Street before tempers could fray. Staggering from the car to embrace passionately in a wayside copse had decidedly not part of the plan the plan. Harriet buttoned her blouse hastily, feeling a little chilly now that the effects of whatever-it-was were wearing off. Peter was talking again.  
  
'I quite understand if you don't want - I mean, if you'd rather I took myself off for good.'  
  
Harriet finished her last button.  
  
'I think that would be - ' she said automatically, and then hesitated.

As an incident to befall one it was of course dreadful. She could think of few things that would have sounded less inviting in the abstract had it been put to her as a way to spend a February afternoon. And yet in practice... It had been damp, and muddy, and she had lost a shoe in the ditch, but when it came to Peter's actions - or indeed her own - she did not seem to be in the least appalled. After all, it had not in any way been Peter's fault. One could not reasonably blame him for not having foreseen the misuse of mysterious potions in a respectable hotel, being the sort of incident that was implausible in detective fiction in even the cheapest magazine, nor accuse him of having taken advantage of the situation. Though memory of some of the details was mercifully a little hazy, Harriet was quite certain that when Peter had brought the Daimler to a screeching halt on the verge and set off running towards the wood, he had entreated her _not_ to follow him.  
  
She became suddenly aware that she had failed to answer Peter's question, and that having found his coat he was sitting staring rigidly at a tree.  
  
'It's been rather a shock,' she said slowly, 'but don't they say that's exactly when one shouldn't make hasty decisions?' It was coming back to her now, the bright colours of the overwhelming lust giving way in memory to finer details, of Peter's hand shivering upon her breast, his voice breaking between ecstasy and despair, and the certain realisation that even half out of his mind with Spanish fly he had displayed both an infinitely greater competence and a great deal more care for her than Philip ever had, and that half out of _her_ mind she had nonetheless noticed it. One shouldn't make hasty decisions, but it did seem rather foolish to not to take this new evidence into account. She got to her feet and Peter hurried to rise and retrieve her shoe from the ditch.  
  
'I think that what I should like now, if you can get that dreadful car to move and take us home, is a hot bath and to wash my hair. It seems to smell of something awful. I suppose we can decide what to do about the gang on the way. But we might have dinner tomorrow, if you liked.'  
  
'Dinner?' said Peter, jerking upright from his contemplation of the car.  
  
'Didn't you say there was a rather good French place you wanted to take me to?'  
  
'Yes, but I - ' He collected himself. 'Thank you, I should like dinner very much. I'll call for you at seven if that's all right. Do you know, I think this contraption might just take us home if we can stand the rattle'. He opened the car down and Harriet lowered herself onto the grimy seat. Certain aches were beginning to make themselves felt, some of which under other circumstances might even have been pleasant, but most of which were probably more to do with falling heavily onto some tree roots half beneath an eleven-stone man. Peter slipped the car into gear and turned them towards London. The battered vehicle was not quite as bad as expected, she thought, watching his hands upon the wheel, sensing his body relax into the seat as their speed climbed.  
  
'I won't try to drive fast,' he said, 'I don't think she'll take it.'  
  
'One can see why they stole the Daimler,' agreed Harriet. The rattle of the car was oddly soothing and she was feeling tired. She closed her eyes. One mustn't make hasty decisions, that would be foolish, especially since even Peter had not considered this the right moment for a proposal. But there was nothing wrong with ensuring that one had all the evidence. It seemed - Peter's hands on the steering wheel, threading it through gloved fingers, Peter's breath in her ear, Peter's weight at her hip - that there might be aspects to his argument that she had not sufficiently considered.


End file.
